Absurdism

"You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. So I bring home the bread."

"That," said Wednesday, driving off, "is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones. Worm food. At night, you're rubbing yourself against worm food. No offense meant."

"The light that came into the room from outside was not bright, but Shadow’s eyes had become used to the dark. There was a woman sitting on the side of his bed. He knew her. He would have known her in a crowd of a thousand, or of a hundred thousand. She was still wearing the navy blue suit they had buried her in. Her voice was a whisper, but a familiar one. “I guess,” said Laura, “you’re going to ask what I’m doing here.” Shadow said nothing. He sat down on the room’s only chair and, finally, asked, “Is that you?” “Yes,” she said. “I’m cold, puppy.” “You’re dead, babe.” “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I am.” She patted the bed next to her. “Come and sit by me,” she said. “No,” said Shadow. “I think I’ll stay right here for now. We have some unresolved issues to address.” “Like me being dead?” “Possibly, but I was thinking more of how you died. You and Robbie.” “Oh,” she said. “That.” Shadow could smell—or perhaps, he thought, he simply imagined that he smelled —an odor of rot, of flowers and preservatives. His wife—his ex-wife ... no, he corrected himself, his late wife—sat on the bed and stared at him, unblinking."

"“Normally people who die stay in their graves,” said Shadow. “Do they? Do they really, puppy? I used to think they did too. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps.” She climbed off the bed and walked over to the window. Her face, in the light of the motel sign, was as beautiful as it had ever been. The face of the woman he had gone to prison for."

"Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end."

"“Babes,” he told her. “You’re dead.” “That’s one of those aspects, obviously.” She paused. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going now. It will be better if I go.” And, naturally and easily, she turned and put her hands on Shadow’s shoulders, and went up on tiptoes to kiss him goodbye, as she had always kissed him goodbye. Awkwardly he bent to kiss her on the cheek, but she moved her mouth as he did so and pushed her lips against his. Her breath smelled, faintly, of mothballs. Laura’s tongue flickered into Shadow’s mouth. It was cold, and dry, and it tasted of cigarettes and of bile. If Shadow had had any doubts as to whether his wife was dead or not, they ended then. He pulled back."

"“These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us.”"

"This is the only country in the world," said Wednesday, into the stillness, "that worries about what it is." "What?" "The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are."

"Shadow could have been in his bed at home, he thought, in the apartment that he had shared with Laura—in the bed that he had shared with Laura. But the thought of being there without her, surrounded by her things, her scent, her life, was simply too painful. . . Don ’t go there, thought Shadow. He decided to think about something else."

"Sleep took him then, without Shadow noticing. He was walking . . . He was walking through a room bigger than a city, and everywhere he looked there were statues and carvings and rough-hewn images. He was standing beside a statue of a womanlike thing: her naked breasts hung flat and pendulous on her chest, around her waist was a chain of severed hands, both of her own hands held sharp knives, and, instead of a head, rising from her neck there were twin serpents, their bodies arched, facing each other, ready to attack. There was something profoundly disturbing about the statue, a deep and violent wrongness. Shadow backed away from it."

"Shadow had promised himself a bath when he got out of prison, and Shadow kept his promises. The pizza arrived shortly after he got out of the bath, and Shadow ate it, washing it down with a can of root beer. Shadow lay in bed, thinking, This is my first bed as a free man, and the thought gave him less pleasure than he had imagined that it would. He left the drapes open, watched the lights of the cars and of the fast food joints through the window glass, comforted to know there was another world out there, one he could walk to anytime he wanted."

"There was a thin young woman behind the counter at the Motel America. She told Shadow he had already been checked in by his friend, and gave him his rectangular plastic room key. She had pale blonde hair and a rodentlike quality to her face that was most apparent when she looked suspicious, and eased when she smiled."

"He began to walk through the hall. The carved eyes of those statues that had eyes seemed to follow his every step."

"“How was the funeral?” he asked. “It’s over,” said Shadow. “You want to talk about it?” “No,” said Shadow. “Good.” Wednesday grinned. “Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence.”"

""He’s hustling you,” said Mad Sweeney, rubbing his bristly ginger beard. “He’s a hustler.” “Damn straight I’m a hustler,” said Wednesday. “That’s why I need someone to look out for my best interests.”"

""I don't like you, Mister Wednesday, or whatever your real name may be. We are not friends. I don't know how you got off that plane without me seeing you, or how you trailed me here. But I'm impressed. You have class. And I'm at a loose end right now. You should know that when we're done, I'll be gone. And if you piss me off, I'll be gone too. Until then, I'll work for you." Wednesday grinned. His smiles were strange things, Shadow decided. They contained no shred of humor, no happiness, no mirth. Wednesday looked like he had learned to smile from a manual. "Very good," he said. "Then we have a compact. And we are agreed." "What the hell," said Shadow."

"The quickest way is sometimes the longest."

"So what are you? A two-bit con artist?" Wednesday nodded. "Yes," he said. "I suppose I am. Among other things."

"A precise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could see no one."

"The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He did not awake in prison with a feeling of dread; he was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it."

"Shadow shrugged. He could see nothing romantic in a death sentence. If you didn’t have a death sentence, he decided, then prison was, at best, only a temporary reprieve from life, for two reasons. First, life creeps back into prison."

"There are always places to go further down. Life goes on. And second, if you just hang in there, someday they’re going to have to let you out."

"If Hell is other people, thought Shadow, then Purgatory is airports."

"Like I said, don't piss off those bitches in the airports," said Johnnie Larch, in the back of his mind, "or they'll haul your sorry ass back here before you can spit"

"You work for me now. You protect me. You transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil. And in return I shall make sure that your needs are adequately taken care of."

"Lord of Light was intentionally written so that it could be taken as a science fiction or a fantasy novel. On the one hand, I attempted to provide some justifications for what went on in the way of the bizarre; on the other, I employed a style I associate with fantasy in the telling of the story. I wrote it that way on purpose, leaving some intentional ambiguity, because I wanted it to lie somewhat between both camps and not entirely in either. I did this because I did not see much stuff being written at that time which fit that description; because I wanted to see whether I could do it; and because I was curious as to how such a book would be received."

"In 1979, Geller penned Lord of Light, an adaptation of Roger Zelazny's Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel. The title morphed into Argo when the CIA evacuated six US diplomats from Iran by turning them into a film crew. But contrary to how Affleck's film portrays it, the script wasn't just some jokey, throwaway nonsense a hack writer shat out. It was the opening salvo for a dream that would change the world. With assistance from sci-fi visionaries Ray Bradbury, Paolo Solari, and artist Jack Kirby, Geller was using the script to help fund a science-fiction theme park named, appropriately enough, Science Fiction Land. Science Fiction Land would have been a place for top scientists to show off their gadgets to the public. In other words, something that's way more exciting than the movie Argo. (My friend described the situation best by saying, “Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I want to live in the alternate universe where a couple of Americans died in Iran and this theme park exists.”) While the park's long dead, an Oscar-based jolt of enthusiasm has Geller kicking the tires on finally seeing his original script turned into a film, and he's the subject of a forthcoming documentary called Science Fiction Land."

"While few of the characters have much depth, they manage to be both human and, when they take on their Aspects and wield their Attributes, embodiments of fundamental forces. Sam himself is a crotchety old-timer and a con-man and a trickster — but also an embodiment of military prowess and defiance against odds. … Myth and religion never actually break free from the scientific scaffolding, but they manage to make it irrelevant — one could almost consider Lord of Light a demonstration that their symbolic power does not rest on their metaphysical claims. … Somehow all the disparate components of Lord of Light — humour and epic, science and religion, action and philosophy — come together in a successful novel. The result is my favourite Zelazny work and indeed one of my favourite science fiction novels of all time. Though it won the Hugo award in 1968, it has I think been relatively neglected; it can bear comparison with the much better known Dune (and there are parallels with Herbert's use of Sufism in that work)."

""Colonists from another planet conquer Earth and become the historic Hindu Gods until they turn against each other for control of the world. From this heralds the return of the Buddha, magic, spirituality, unification of all forces, and a new generation of mankind" … The international best-selling Hugo Award winning novel of science fantasy by: Roger Zelazny Lord of Light is … A metaphysical action adventure love story where the crew of a space ship colonize an ancient planet, their passengers become the populace, and they use their technology to turn themselves into powerful gods and goddesses. One man stands alone to fight his old colleagues and free mankind. … Sam is the dreamer and master schemer. He is the strategist and cosmic trickster who becomes Siddhartha and then the Buddha to ward off the iron grasp of Heaven. Sam is the ancient renegade god Kalkin whose powers become ever-more revealed to him as he fights to change the course of an entire civilization — and upon whose shoulders rests the future of the entire world. In the end he will be recognized by history as the true leader, the Binder of Destiny, The Lord of Light…"

"Lord of Light is a wonderful novel, fully worthy of the praise it has garnered. It is set many centuries in the future, after "the death of Urath." On a colony planet, men have battled the previous inhabitants and won, and have established a society. This society is based on technological means of imitating the Hindu religion. Specifically, when the body nears death, it is possible to transfer the "mind" or "soul" to a new body, even the body of an animal. But some of the earliest colonists, including the "First," have additional powers, which give them the status of gods. They also have taken control of the means of reincarnation, and a faction among them is using that means in political ways: punishing their enemies with reincarnation as animals, or with the "true death." The result is a society of humans living in a world in which something resembling Hinduism is literally true. Furthermore, the leading faction of "gods" is using its powers to keep the technological level of human society low enough that their own position cannot be threatened. The book opens with a renegade "god" at an isolated temple calling the book's hero back from "heaven.""

"Lord Of Light is a novel about a future world after the destruction of Earth, conquered by men who, through ultratechnology, give themselves godlike powers and set themselves up as the old Hindu gods to rule the common people. Called The First, they have achieved a kind of immortality by transferring their identities from old bodies to new ones. These deicrats (as Zelazny calls them) through centuries of "divine" rule, have become corrupt, and only one among them will openly oppose their tyranny. He is the hero, "who was variously known as Mahasamatman, Kalkin, Manjusri, Siddhartha, Tathagatha, Binder, Maitreya, the Enlight-ened One, Buddha and Sam.""

"Mendez said he needed a movie script for a scheme that he had concocted to rescue six U.S. diplomatic personnel from the Canadian embassy in Iran where they were hiding. The agent had planned to travel to Iran under the guise of a movie producer and fool Iranian officials into believing that the six Americans were actors and members of his production team. Fortunately for Mendez, Chambers had the perfect script. In December 1979, Chambers gave Mendez Geller's Lord of Light script and Kirby's storyboards, which had remained in Chambers' possession since the plug was pulled on the film's production. Chambers and Mendez changed the name of the production from Lord of Light to Argo and the rest of the story became history, as the plan was successful and all six Americans made it home safely. Geller said he didn't learn that his script had been used for the top secret mission until 2001."

"It's fantasy, or it's science fiction, or it's a retelling of the tales of the Hindu gods, as they encounter Mahasamatman, who may be Buddha and may just be a guy called Sam. It's a book I reread every few decades, and love."

"The spoon came alive with spoon-ness and the ball with ball-ness and the block with block-ness, and the girl laughed. Even the puppy seemed to study the objects."

"Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty. As the wearers of the saffron robe still meditate upon the Way of Light, and the girl who is named Murga visits the Temple daily, to place before her dark one in his shrine the only devotion he receives, of flowers."

"“Something always manages to draw me near the tree that lightning is about to fall upon.” “Destiny, sir.” “Rather an accidental social conscience and some right mistake-making, I fear.”"

"You? You rose again?" "It doesn't count," said Sam. "I didn't do it the hard way." Tears filled the Black One's eyes. "It means you'll win, though," he gasped. "I can't understand why He permitted it..."

"I was pleased to get a copy of Roger Zelazny's novel Lord of Light the other day. It's one of my favourite books (I think the first thing author Steve Brust ever said to me was "Let's have an argument. Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light is the best book anyone's ever written." "Ah," I said, "If you make it best SF book of the 1960s, I'll go along with it." "Oh. Fair enough." It was the first of a long line of failed arguments.) It's got a blurb from me on it, which I hope sells many copies."

"I shall return to being a man, and I shall let the people keep the Buddha who is in their hearts. Whatever the source, the message was pure, believe me. That is the only reason it took root and grew."

"Time like an ocean, space like its water, Sam in the middle, standing, decided."

"I know my power is returning. I can feel it. Many things are returning now. During the weeks we have dwelled here in Ratri's palace I have meditated upon my past lives. They were not all failures, deathgod. I have decided this today. Though Heaven has beaten me at every turn, each victory has cost them much."

"Taraka of the Rakasha was uneasy. Flitting above the clouds that moved through the middle of the day, he thought upon the ways of power. He had once been mightiest. In the days before the binding there had been none who could stand against him. Then Siddhartha the Binder had come. He had known of him earlier, known of him as Kalkin and had known him to be strong. Sooner or later, he had realized, they would have to meet, that he might test the power of that Attribute which Kalkin was said to have raised up. When they had come together, on that mighty, gone day when the mountaintops had flared with their fury, on that day the Binder had won. And in their second encounter, ages afterward, he had somehow beaten him even more fully. But he had been the only one, and now he was gone from out the world. Of all creatures, only the Binder had bested the Lord of Hellwell. Then the gods had come to challenge his power. They had been puny in the early days, struggling to discipline their mutant powers with drugs, hypnosis, meditation, neurosurgery — forging them into Attributes — and across the ages, those powers had grown. Four of them had entered Hellwell, only four, and his legions had not been able to repel them. The one called Shiva was strong, but the Binder had later slain him. This was as it should be, for Taraka recognized the Binder as a peer."

"Taraka screamed as Siddhartha rode toward him upon a white horse, the air crackling and smelling of ozone: "No, Binder! Hold your power! My death belongs to Yama . . ." "Oh foolish demon!" said Sam. "It need not have been...""

"Tricky and brilliant and heartfelt and dangerous."

""There are only demigods and men upon the field," said Death. "They are still testing our strength. There are very few who remember the full power of Kalkin." "The full power of Kalkin?" asked Sam. "That has never been released, oh Death. Not in all the ages of the world."

"Overhead, the thunder chariot passed once again. Sam raised his lance and pyrotechnic hell broke loose about the passing vessel. "You should not have let them know you could do that! Not yet!""

"It is said that each day recapitulates the history of the world, coming up out of darkness and cold into confused light and beginning warmth, consciousness blinking its eyes somewhere in midmorning, awakening thoughts a jumble of illogic and unattached emotion, and all speeding together toward the order of noontide, the slow, poignant decline of dusk, the mystical vision of twilight, the end of entropy that is night once more."

"I decided that mankind could live better without gods. If I disposed of them all, people could start having can openers and cans to open again, and things like that, without fearing the wrath of Heaven. We've stepped on these poor fools enough. I wanted to give them a chance to be free, to build what they wanted." "But they live, and they live and they live." "Sometimes, and sometimes not. So do the gods." "You were about the last Accelerationist left in the world, Sam. No one would have thought you were also the deadliest."

"The Buddha has gone to nirvana," said Brahma. "Preach it in the Temples! Sing it in the streets'. Glorious was his passing! He has reformed the old religion, and we are better now than ever before! Let all who would think otherwise remember Keenset!"

"The gods are strong — stronger than they have ever been before." "But tell me who is coming to aid us." "Lord Nirriti the Black, who hates all things, hates the Gods of the City most of all. So he is sending a thousand unliving ones to fight on the plains beside the Vedra. He said that, after the battle, we of the Rakasha may take our choice from the bodies which yet remain among the mindless ones he has grown." "I do not relish aid from the Black One, but I am in no position to discriminate..."